Here's a bit of backstory I picked up recently from lyrics guru Ron Hontz:

Johnny Mercer grew up in Savannah, GA and, as a youth, would often visit black churches to hear the sermons as well as to listen to the music. He took great pleasure in listening to one Daddy Grace, Savannah's premier evangelist, who nce preached a sermon called "Accentuate the Positive." That sermon stayed with Johnny into his adulthood. He was riding in a car with composer Howard Arlen when Arlen began whistling what Johnny called 'an offbeat little rhythm tune' and the sermon sprang to mind. By the time they reached work at Paramount, Johnny said, the song had just about written itself. Johnny honored Daddy Grace by including in the lyrics "listen while I preach some" and "Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark."

The lyric and guitar chord transcriptions on this site are the work of The Guitarguy and are intended for private study, research, or educational purposes only. Individual transcriptions are inspired by and and based upon the recorded versions cited, but are not necessarily exact replications of those recorded versions.